


Inauspicious Beginnings

by Fishielicious



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fishielicious/pseuds/Fishielicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that they're looking for trouble, it's just that they never really learned how to avoid it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Neither of them had much experience on horseback, or rather, pony-back. They'd ridden before, at least, they'd been taught, back home in the Blue Mountains. They weren't meant to think of that as home. Their mother and their uncle would never use that word, but it was where they were born and grew up and learned and made friends and went to bed at night mostly warm and full and comfortable and, generally, overall, happy. They didn't know what else home could mean. They didn't have a real clue what Erebor meant. It may as well have been a fairy tale. Just as they so often struggled with the concept of Mahal, so too they struggled to think of Erebor as something corporeal. To them it only existed in the glow of the rising sun to the east.

But they would never admit that to Dís or to Thorin, for whom Erebor was a scar: real and painful. And though they loved and already missed the Blue Mountains, they were grown Dwarves now, more or less, and ready to see what lay out in the east under the shine of the newborn sun, to slay dragons and seek their fortunes.

And besides any of that, what their uncle asked, they would never refuse. Well, they'd had to work hard to get invited in the first pace. Their mother thought they were too young, and their mother held sway over their uncle, but after a long period of striving to appear very serious and practicing their swordsmanship and axe-wielding and metallurgy and metalworking very diligently, their mother and their uncle relented. And then they were invited, formally, because their uncle needed more men and then they couldn't say no. Not that they were would have. But still, they only very vaguely knew how to ride ponies and the first leg of their journey, alone, just the two of them, to Hobbiton for God knows what purpose, already seemed long and arduous. And they wasn't even any danger of encountering dragons, yet.

It was their second day on the road and Kíli thought Fíli looked better on his pony. Well, he looked serious and grown up. Kíli felt small and he didn't like having his feet off the ground. He knew he was bouncing around on the pony's back. His tail bone hurt.

It was getting on toward dark and they would have to find an inn soon. You had to take advantage of inns while you were still in that part of the world that had them, Dwalin said. He probably knew if he didn't say something like that, they'd've tried roughing it right away. And they might have, too, if they didn't have the natural instinct to seek out the places where the ale was strongest and most plentiful.

They had got a late start that morning, for reasons they were rather too ashamed to admit, so they were trying to make up time today. That meant neither of them wanted to be the first to say he wanted to stop, even though both of them were tired and sore. They told themselves they'd better get used to being tired and sore, which, of course, was right.

So the sky darkened in front of them, and over them, and then they couldn't even feel the sun on their backs. One thing they were grateful for was the warmth that stayed in the air. That it was only the beginning of summer gave them hope. They were prepared for cold. They were from cold. They knew cold. So, in that respect, they were coming out on top, and they felt pretty good about it.

It was with that in mind that, when they crested the next hill and saw lights ahead, they exchanged a look and urged their ponies faster.

Faster was a very relative term when it came to the ponies. They were round enough they might have rolled down the hill quicker than they could've run, but eventually they came into town.

It was too dark to read the sign over the inn's door when they finally got to it. They just tied the ponies up front and went in.

Fíli let Kíli handle talking to people and working out semantics like rooms for the night and drinks. Fíli was usually better with details but Kíli was more of a people person.

Fíli just sat down at an empty table. Almost all the tables were empty. Fíli thought there were a couple of hobbits in the corner, which was exciting at first, because he thought they must be getting close to the Shire. And he thought about telling Kíli, because Kíli was suspicious that hobbits were mythical beings, but he wasn't sure, and they might just be short people. They'd only just the day before got out of the Blue Mountains' foothills, and from the map, he figured they couldn't be much further than. Well. Maybe he wasn't so good with details after all. He'd figure out where they were after he'd had a drink.

Kíli came back to the table with drinks in his hands and a smile on his face. He didn't even sit down before Fíli said, "What." He meant, what was that smile about. What was that smile ever about?

"Do you want to go sit at the bar?"

"Do you think those are hobbits?" Fíli took a mug from Kíli's hand and gestured at the corner.

Kíli looked and Fíli took a drink. He wiped the foam from his mustache with the back of a hand that smelled like dirt and sweat. "Those are just short people," Kíli said. "But look, the barman has his sister up there. And they seem nice." He shrugged. "It would be nice to talk to someone else, wouldn't it?"

"What, bored of my conversation already?"

Kíli guffawed. "Don't be stupid, come on." And he turned back to the bar.

Fíli drank half his beer before he followed. He was hoping, maybe, that Kíli might give up and come back. He could see the barman and his sister. He could see them wasting a lot of time up there.

Finally, he followed his brother to the bar. When he sat down, Kíli was already laughing, like he did.

The barman was smiling, finishing the end of some joke or story, and wiping out a mug with a wet rag. His sister was sitting on the bar with her stockinged feet on the stool in front of her. She was smiling politely and had her hands held primly in her lap. Fíli tried to guess how tall she was. Certainly taller than they were, but maybe not by too much.

Fíli had the impression they were going to be losing money tonight.

Kíli introduced him to them and Fíli smiled. The barman nodded at him and must have said his name, but Fíli instantly forgot it. The sister widened her polite smile to show teeth and said to call her Sister. Fíli took another drink of his beer and resisted the temptation to rub at a smudge on Kíli's cheek.

"You must be from the Blue Mountains, right? Ered Luin, right?" the barman asked.

Kíli was fishing for something in his pockets and said, "Lucky guess."

"Where are you going?" Sister asked. Her hair was red and falling out of the bun at the back of her head. She had freckles across her nose.

"To meet family," Kíli said. "Coming from the Iron Hills."

"They have a long way to come," the barman said.

"Or we have a long way to go." Fíli curled his hand around his pipe in his pocket. He figured that's what Kíli was looking for. Only Fíli thought he'd borrowed Kíli's pipe the night before and put it back somewhere in his pack. Now didn't seem like a good time to mention it.

The barman stopped wiping his wet rag on the mug in his hand and threw it against the bar.

"It's going to be a huge party," Kíli said. He still had his hand in his pocket, but his eyes were focused on Sister. "We only do it once every fifty years."

"Why don't we have another drink?" Sister laughed. Her laugh, like her smile, was polite and gracious.

"Are you really his sister?" Fíli asked when the barman turned around to fill their mugs.

"Born and raised," she said. 

"She's my baby sister," the barman said. He put three mugs down on the bar. "So be nice to her."

Sister laughed and turned her toes to face one another.

"Born and raised where?" Kíli asked.

The barman shrugged and Sister whistled. "Right here!" she said. The barman grinned and shoved her shoulder.

Fíli thought about asking where "right here" was, but his pride wouldn't let him. He'd look at the map, later. For now, he just took a long drink.

Then he caught Sister tucking a lock of hair behind Kíli's ear, the corner of her polite smile pinched between her teeth. "If you're meeting family, does that mean you're family, too?" she asked.

"Of course," Kíli said.

"We're brothers," said Fíli.

"Well where's the rest of your family?" She pulled on Kíli's hair still between her fingers. "The ones who're coming with you?" She hopped down from the bar and stood behind them. She grabbed the third mug, which had been sitting untouched on the bar, and ended up leaning between them, with her shoulders rubbing theirs.

Fíli hesitated. Kíli didn't seem to want to say anything, so he did, finally. "They're just behind. We're…"

"Scouting ahead." Kíli finished.

"They'll be here soon. They're weighed down." Sister turned to face Fíli. Her mouth was open, like she was impressed by something.

"Weighed down by what?"

"Well, weapons, of course," Kíli said. Fíli thought it was just because he wanted her attention back.

"Loads of weapons. We have plenty, too, but they're lighter."

"Oh." Sister grabbed Fíli's wrist.

"We're younger; we can move faster," said Kíli.

"Oh, my. Why don't we have another round?" Sister launched herself up on the bar between them.

"We'd love to." Kíli punched Fíli's knee under the bar.

Fíli finished his beer, and as soon as it hit the bar, the barman grabbed his mug and refilled it. Kíli hurried to finish his.

Sister stopped asking them about their family, and she and the barman started joking and telling stories about their childhoods. Maybe they were actually brother and sister, Fíli thought, though it always seemed strange, like they called her Sister so people wouldn't think they were together. He didn't let it bother him for long. He and Kíli got caught up, and told stories about when they were little in the Blue Mountains, their ma and the trouble they got into. Fíli lost track of time after a few more rounds.

Perhaps they should have been more naturally suspicious of the kindness of strangers, but that was a hard thing to ask one who was very sore and tired, and tired was one thing they were.

Fíli didn't know how long he'd had his head resting on the bar, didn't know how long they'd gone without talking when he opened his eyes to Kíli nudging at his shoulder. They looked at each other and at Sister, who had slid off on the other side of the bar and was leaning on it with her chin in her hands. Fíli yawned and nodded.

Sister perked up a bit when she saw them stand up. The barman wasn't paying attention, but she lifted her head and said, "Going so soon?" She batted her lashes and flashed a sloppy version of her polite smile, but now that they were standing up, they could tell how tall she was, and that made it easier for them to say goodnight and wave with sleepy fingers.

"We should've had supper," Kíli murmured. They were stumbling down a narrow hallway, leaning into each other.

Fíli dug his fingers into Kíli's ribcage and laughed. It all still seemed a little extreme. He felt his forehead pressing into Kíli's neck. He laughed again.

"Okay." Kíli veered into a wall and grabbed a doorknob to hold himself up. "This is our room," he said. "This is our room. I think."

"Looks like another late start," Fíli said. He thought he said it at some point before he said down on the bed and pulled his boots off. He thought he pulled his boots off.

Kíli said something about sleeping with your boots on that he didn't even understand.

Then neither of them remembered anything.


	2. Chapter 2

When they woke up, they couldn't move.

Kíli could see the back of Fíli's head and not much else. He couldn't feel his fingers. He couldn't move his hands. He tried to sit up, but he couldn't do that, either. His vision was blurry. It took him long minutes to realize they were tied up. His head, even on the ground, felt heavy and scrambled.

He couldn't tell whether Fíli in front of him was moving or whether his vision was swimming.

He called Fíli's name when he worked the knots out of his tongue. He thought he heard Fíli groan something. Then he rolled onto his back and Kíli could see his profile.

He tried to yell. It came out garbled. Dried blood coated Fíli's lips and tangled in his hair. His braids were undone.

Kíli struggled to find his hands to push himself into a sitting position. He only succeeded in scrabbling across the ground--dirt, something sharp, he guessed rocks and twigs--until his head collided with something solid. He dug his heels into the dirt and pressed his head into the thing behind him. It was rough and he could feel it scrape his scalp. If he looked, he could see gray trunks and dark green bristles around them. A tree, he thought. He was pushing against a tree.

He managed to get his shoulder against the trunk and slid up to a sitting position.

They were, he saw, in a sparsely wooded area. That was it.

"Fíli." He tried to kick Fíli in the side, but his ankles were tied together, too. "Fíli," he said it as loud as he could. Something caught in his throat and he spat out a wad of bloody mucous.

Fíli didn't answer, and for a while Kíli hovered somewhere between sleep and consciousness, leaning on the tree, until Fíli said, "What?" and groaned.

That woke Kíli up, and he managed to slide halfway back down the trunk and toed Fíli in the ribs. He kind of lost track of what he intended to say, so he just made a kind of strangled squealing sound.

Fíli laughed.

Kíli said, "We're in a forest."

Fíli laughed again.

With a little work, they managed to turn themselves back to back, to try to untie each others' hands. It was a difficult proposition, particularly as they couldn't agree on who should try to untie whose hands first, or whose hands were whose, and beyond that, it was just hard in general to get knots out of rope when you couldn't see the knot and had to work behind your back and your hands were tied, too, and your stupid brother wouldn't stop squirming around like a fish flopping on dry land.

Finally, though, it happened. They didn't know how it happened, but Fíli got free and, after taking his sweet time untying his own ankles, he got the rope around Kíli's wrists loose, too. Then he let Kíli loose his own ankles while he walked around and surveyed their surroundings.

"Okay," he said, when he got back to Kíli, who was still sitting on the ground unwinding the rope around his ankles. "We're missing our weapons, our food, our coats, our money, our fiddles. And what? Anything else?" Kíli looked up and Fíli had his hands on his hips, potentially trying to look regal.

"Our self respect?" Kíli was normally more optimistic, but he had a bad hangover and was annoyed that Fíli seemed to be much less groggy and muddle-headed.

Fíli grabbed Kíli by the arm and pulled him to his feet. "We're also lost."

"Well." Kíli put his hands on his head and tried to clear his mind. "Well," he said. "If the sun is there, then. That must be east."

Fíli kept laughing. "How do we know it's morning, though?"

"It must be morning."

"Even if that is east, what good is it to us if we don't know where the road is, and what direction they took us."

"We are going back to town, aren't we?"

"Of course we are."

"We have to get our things back," they said together, and they sat down to think of a plan.

*

After a fair amount of drawing in the dirt with their fingers, consulting moss on tree trunks, and fussing over each new injury one spotted on the other, they agreed which way was east, that it was still morning, but by now getting on to noon, and that they were probably southeast of town, if they were to trust the topography as illustrated on their map, which Fíli still had in his pocket.

Having decided that the road must be to the north, they stared walking.

"I guess we've lost the ponies, too," Kíli said. He kicked a rock, which went flying into a nearby tree trunk and bounced back at them.

"Um. Yes." Fíli tried to follow the rock with his eyes but lost it under some dead leaves.

When they got to the road, they slapped each other on the back, turned west and kept walking.

"You know, we're going the wrong direction, really," Kíli said.

"No, we're not." Fíli started walking faster, so as not to give Kíli the opportunity to stop and make an issue of it.

"Yes, Hobbiton--that Mr. Boggins. That's the other direction."

"Oh, thanks for that, because I had no idea." Now Fíli was tempted to stop and have it out, but if he did that, Kíli was already winning.

"That's where we should be going." Kíli had to keep following him if he wanted to keep arguing. "If we're late--we can't keep wasting time. Uncle Thorin will be--he'll look at us with that face, you know. Where he looks like--" Fíli didn't have to look back to see the face Kíli was making or to imagine it, but much scarier than Kíli could do, on their uncle's face.

His step stuttered, but he kept going. "And what do you think his face would look like if we got there and we'd already lost everything we had. Those--your sword, your bow, Kíli? What do you think he would do?"

"They'll leave without us."

Now, Fíli did spin around. Kíli ran into him and Fíli pushed him back. "If we don't get our things back, he'll send us home. And they'll leave without us, anyway."

Kíli's mouth tightened. Fíli knew he didn't want, any more than Fíli himself did, for that to happen.

"So, what? Are you scared? Let's go." And Fíli turned around and started walking again.

Kíli followed without further argument.

By the time they got into town, it wasn't morning anymore.

Everything looked different in the daylight, and it took them a while to find the inn from the night before. The ponies, of course, were gone. They stood in the alley across the street, staring and whispering to one another.

Marching in and hoping to confront the barman was, they both agreed, not on. Not the way things stood, now. No, they'd have to be cleverer about it. They'd have to get weapons first.

They kicked in the back window of a shop down the street. The sign out front said away on business and, suspicious now of everything in the town, they thought there was a chance they might find all of their things on sale in the front.

That would've been convenient, but it was a bit hard to imagine where they might've fit two ponies in among bolts of fabric and cookwares. But there were kitchen knives. Butcher's knives and cleavers and all manner of sharp and prickly things.

They stocked up, and they reckoned if they couldn't get their things back, at least they could come back here for supplies for the way back home. They didn't say that out loud, but they looked at each other and twisted their lips and furrowed their browns. Then they went out the way they came in, but now with knives tucked in all their pockets and hidden in their boots.

"I might cut myself with one of these," Kíli whispered in Fíli's ear. At this point, he was doing it solely to irritate him.

Fíli didn't respond, because, of course, he knew that.

Kíli shook his boots around and felt the knives shift inside and the flat sides knock against his ankles and Fíli slapped him on the stomach.

Inside, the inn was as dark as the night before and emptier. Fíli had it in his mind to make some sort of grand entrance, but Kíli had managed to push himself in front and then there they were, standing there with dust motes floating across their field of vision and trying to get used to the darkness.

There was no one in the room. No diners or drinkers and no barman or Sister.

Then they heard their stomachs rumble, and they looked at each other, and next thing, they were behind the bar pouring beers and searching for a kitchen and some variety of food often found behind bars like nuts or eggs.

"You know, it's as if we didn't learn a lesson at all," Kíli said, scraping the foam off the top of his beer with the knife that had been in his boot.

"They can't drug all their beer. They drink the stuff themselves." Fíli was rummaging around in the bottom cabinets, but so far he hadn't found anything edible.

"Maybe they didn't drug any of it," Kíli said. "Maybe we just drank too much."

Fíli could feel Kíli's smile burning into the back of his head. "Not a chance."

When they didn't find anything to eat behind the bar, they moved to the hallways they vaguely remembered stumbling down the night before.

"Maybe our stuff is still in our room," Kíli said. "Maybe we went into the woods ourselves and don't remember it." He was hugging Fíli's shoulder and whispering into his ear. Again, just to annoy him.

"And tied ourselves up, too?"

Kíli laughed.

The first door they kicked in had nothing behind it but an empty room. Likewise the next five. They were getting tired of kicking in doors.

The sixth door, they thought to try the knob first. When it was locked, they became intrigued, and kicked that one in, too.

There was a stairway behind it. They pushed each other trying to get down it first. When they tumbled out the bottom, caught in each other's legs, they were in a basement made of earth. Their eyes, once they had adjusted, were sharp in the dark, and they were used to underground spaces.

Right away they recognized in the back corner the dull shapes of Kíli's bow and Fíli's hammer. Brief doubts flashed like lightning bugs through their brains as to the wisdom of marching directly into a dark room filled with stolen goods belonging to people who had just robbed them and left them for dead in the middle of the nowhere. But those doubts were only brief and they were halfway across the room when something tightened around Fíli's neck and pulled him back from behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is pretty ridiculous, I guess, but it was really fun to write. I just like writing these two being idiots, really. And I think it probably takes a lot to drug a Dwarf, even if they are very short. They are also very hardy! Anyway, watch your drinks, people, or someone out there will take advantage of your naivete and steal your ponies and throwing knives!


	3. Chapter 3

Kíli saw it and he jumped straight into something that felt human. He found the knife in his pocket just as another knife rose to his neck.

The safest thing to do in this situation was to drop the knife in his hand. This was another thought that blinked in and out of Kíli's mind, in the voice of his mother. What he did instead was bring the knife down as hard as he could directly behind him. He felt something cold on his neck and realized he'd been cut, but he pulled his knife out of the leg of his assailant as the man fell to his knees, hissing.

Kíli staggered but stayed on his feet. He reached out in front of him, trying to find Fíli, who had disappeared into the darkness, but whose voice he could hear intermittently. His hand didn't find anything, and he felt his shirt wetting with his blood. The barman--Kíli didn't know, really, if it even was the barman, but that's who he was picturing--grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him to the ground. He kicked behind him, hard, with his free foot, and thought he heard something crack. Anyway, his ankle came free.

He scrambled forward on all fours and screamed Fíli's name.

He didn't hear him respond and didn't hear his voice at all in the dark anymore, and that was because the barman, who was actually the one who'd grabbed Fíli in the first place, was holding him off the ground by his neck.

His mouth was flapping, he was trying to say something or breathe. But nothing was coming out or in.

Kíli didn't know this, exactly, but he felt the blood drip off his own neck and he scrambled to his feet with a knife clenched in one hand, and the other hand searching his pockets for another blade. He fell, more than ran at the vague silhouette he saw.

He didn't want to hold his knife out. He didn't want to hit Fíli. Instead, he ran head first, and his head hit the barman in the ribs. His knees nearly gave out under him. Then Fíli fell on top of him and he smacked his forehead against the rocky floor.

At that point, now with oxygen rushing to his brain, Fíli's consciousness became more sharply focused as Kíli's faded out. The barman had his hand knotted in Fíli's hair, and he tried to slam his head against the wall. Fíli grabbed Kíli under the arm and dug his heels in, though they didn't find much traction on the ground. His hair tore from his scalp and his head hit the wall, but with less force. He reeled and struggled to wrap his fingers around the knife in his breast pocket. It was just a bread knife, not good for throwing, but properly sharp.

The barman stepped back and yelped.

Fíli didn't know why. He just grabbed Kíli and pulled him to his feet, where he stood, swaying. Kíli still hadn't let go of his knife. The barman limped, but he was still on his feet. Behind him, Fíli could see another shadow stirring. Fíli grabbed the knife out of Kíli's hand and threw it. It hit somewhere on the barman's chest, handle-first, and bounced off (he never would have missed with his own knives, he thought). He pulled another knife out of his boot and threw that one, too. It hit, true, and stuck in the barman's stomach. Fíli had started to search for more knives hidden on his person when he felt Kíli tug on his arm.

It was just nature to do what Kíli was doing, so when Kíli ran, he ran too, at the back wall, and it seemed to happen naturally, that he stooped down and made a basket of his hands to raise Kíli up to where their weapons hung on the wall. Kíli dropped Fíli's hammer, nearly on top of his head, and jumped out of Fíli's hands just as the barman reached them.

Fíli barely got a hold of his hammer. Its head scraped the floor and he couldn't even bring it up to his shoulder before he had to swing it.

The barman tried to catch it with his arm, but it buckled his wrist and the spiked end of the hammer head hit him across the jaw. He fell, and Fíli didn't see any sign that he might get up again soon. He heard Kíli's bowstring flex and put his arm out to stop him.

They looked down at the other man--the non-barman, who was stirring on the floor.

Fíli felt the handle of his hammer and looked back up at Kíli. He gestured at the man on the ground and Kíli shrugged. They were both wondering. While Fíli kept his eye on the still stirring man, Kíli checked out the barman.

His jaw was broken. His teeth were scattered on the floor. The whole bottom half of his face was shapeless. He told Fíli and stood up. He wiped the barman's blood on his shirt.

They decided to knock him out. Him being the other man. They didn't want to use the hammer again. They knew how to fight when they needed to, and it didn't feel bad, then. But they didn't like looking at the barman's formless jaw or feeling his blood on their fingers. And they didn't like to think of when he woke up, and they found themselves rubbing their own jaws at the idea.

Meanwhile, the other man was lying still again, which they were suspicious might mean he was fully conscious again and just playing dead.

They were uncomfortable inflicting undue pain, but there was undue pain and then there was due pain. So they found an old shovel in the corner under some rotting potatoes.

Kíli hit the man over his head with it, since Fíli had been the one to hit the barman. Then they flipped him on his back and slapped his face to make sure he was out.

Then they wondered what to do with them while they looked for the rest of their things. It occurred to them only belatedly they might have tied them up and kept them awake to ask where all the rest of their stuff was. And it would've served them right to leave them out somewhere in the woods. But they, Fíli and Kíli, didn't really have time for the last part, anyway. So they took the men by the feet and dragged them in the corner, then piled the sacks of rotting potatoes, which were great in number, on top of them.

With all the potato sacks cleared out, it was easier for Fíli and Kíli to find their own things, even in the dark.

They found their fiddles quickly, but they didn't look to see if they were still in one piece in their cases.

Though it was still only the beginning of summer, they still felt it was of vital importance to find their coats. The Misty Mountains sounded cold. And wet.

It would have helped if the door were open to let in the light from the hall upstairs, but they were nervous about anyone stumbling in. Finally, they agreed the risk was worth it, and with a faint sliver of light falling across the room, they found their coats tangled together in the back corner, and most of their bags and pipes and knives and all the smaller weapons. Their money wasn't in any of the pockets and they searched the pockets of the barman and his accomplice. There they found some small change, but nothing they'd been carrying. After a few jabs back and forth, they agreed it wasn't worth their time searching for it. By the end of this journey, they'd be rich, anyway. They bit their knuckles to keep from laughing at that and then set their minds to finding the ponies.

Obviously, they would have to look outside this dark basement room.

They closed the door behind them but couldn't find the key to lock it. That was just as well. Their desire for revenge had surged momentarily. They thought they could keep that under control and save their revenge for Smaug.

In the end, they didn't find the ponies. They decided it was more important to get out of town, and quickly, before those men woke up or someone noticed the store down the street had been burgled.

They spent half-an-hour hunched over the map on the outskirts of town, eating from their packs and tracing the road with their fingertips, and determined they could go the rest of the way on foot, if they didn't waste much time sleeping, and still get to the Shire on time.

They wouldn't be staying at any more inns, in any case.

Fíli wet one of his socks with water from his skin and cleaned the blood off of Kíli's neck and tried to scrub it out of his shirt. Then he took the clean sock and wrapped it around Kíli's neck to bandage the wound and couldn't help himself giggling at how stupid it looked. And Kíli looked at the spot where the barman had torn Fíli's hair out, and figured how to brush his hair so you didn't even notice the bald spot.

So they loaded up all their newly reclaimed luggage on their backs and set out walking.

"Uncle Thorin doesn't know we had ponies when we started," Fíli said.

"We can tell him we got hurt training. Before we left," Kíli said.

The sun was setting now behind them and in the summer with their coats on they felt warm, and their bellies were full. Their mother, Dís, had packed plentiful amounts of food. They were glad they'd got it back. They were glad they had something made from their mother's hands, something from home. They thought it'd last them at least until the Lonely Mountain. Until Erebor.

In the warm sun and with their warm bellies and their springing steps, they felt good. With how handily they had dealt with those men, who were more than a foot taller than they were. They felt brave and strong and proud of themselves, if they forgot about the ponies. Kíli wiped at the blood on Fíli's face and Fíli picked sticks and mud out of Kíli's hair and pressed on his bruises to see how long they'd take to heal. They thought, after all, they were made for this adventuring thing.

All the same, they were never going to tell anyone about this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So in the end they're really only 80% incompetent and 1,000,000% lucky. Still unsure this really merits the violence tag but I get real grossed out thinking about people's teeth coming out I have dreams where my teeth all come out and sometimes even my jaw falls out that's the worst. Anyway, this was fun!
> 
> Practicing writing action. Working at it! For some reason my extensive experience in fights and using throwing knives does not easily translate to writing. Hope y'all enjoy and thank you for reading! Exclamation marks!!

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT 8/1: If AO3 had an option to hide stories without deleting them, that is what I would be doing to this rn. I am not a fan of this story. It was an early effort, but I guess I'll preserve it for posterity.
> 
> This is just another bit of fun. Really could be seen as what comes after "Good Hair". I normally don't like to migrate so freely between consciousnesses like I do in this story, but I like the idea of Fili and Kili having that kind of eerie twin shared consciousness connection, so switching between them is very fluid. I may need to work on it more. It comes up more in the later chapters. I like it, but I don't know how it might come across to readers.
> 
> The warning for violence really only applies to later chapters. Speaking of which, the remaining two chapters are all finished and ought to be posted within a day or so.


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